New Piper's "Can-Do" Staff and Attitude Keeps Them
Airborne
An In-Depth Series Looking At The State of New Piper Aircraft
by ANN Editor-In-Chief, Jim Campbell
ANN readers are no
strangers to the tales of woe experienced by a fair segment of
the aviation industry, as a result of last year's extraordinary
four-hurricane blitz. Indeed, even the ANN offices were clobbered
and out of action for the better part of several weeks as a result
of Mother Nature's unbridled fury.
Few aero-businesses were as close to the front lines as New
Piper Aircraft... a stone's throw from the Atlantic ocean and
pretty much ground zero for some of the worst hurricane action we
saw in 2004. They got clobbered... not once, but several times.
Buildings were hammered, flooded, de-roofed (a problem we know all
too well at ANN Central), and a fair percentage of Piper's
workforce were temporarily idled as the business reeled from the
windy hammering that seemed to come every too-few days over the
course of an intensely nasty period of time.
So... after all that,
you'd expect Piper to be on the ropes, circling the drain and
putting out an SOS, wouldn't ya?
Well... it didn't happen. Not even close.
Mind you, nobody's claiming that they didn't get hurt
horribly... but the fact of the matter is that the Piper disaster
plan seems to be one of spending as little time as possible licking
one's wounds and getting on with "Plan B" at warp speed. With a
number of coastal businesses STILL KO'ed, New Piper Aircraft's
strategy was to work where they could, move affected tasks and
production areas to others still useable, and to get parts and
airplanes back in the pipeline as soon as possible. It's a winning
strategy.
And yes, it worked. Damned well, so far.
As we visited the Piper plant a few days ago, our progress to a
meeting with Piper's CEO, Chuck Suma (shown above in pre-Hurricane
days), was delayed by all the people interviewing for new jobs at
the factory while the list of people who had reported earlier
that day for new jobs ran half the length of the front office's
sign-in sheet. It was so impressive that I (jokingly) accused
Piper's Mark Miller of setting the whole thing up just to impress
ANN (it did!). Piper is growing... rapidly.
And while the initial evidence of damage they suffered is but a
few feet away from the displaced main entrance, there is lots of
noisy/dusty/busy activity, repairs are underway, people are working
in new areas, new (albeit temporary) buildings have been brought in
(Suma's office is now set up in a portable building erected to
allow he and his senior staff to work while primary repair efforts
are lavished upon the production area), and the whole place seems
simply devoted to finding solutions to the critical issue of
keeping New Piper a major player in the GA universe.
One of the key elements in the recovery process was the
"community" support Piper received from the local town and it's own
employees... who made themselves available to support the company
and those staffers who were most adversely affected by the
blow-out. Both Suma and Piper's Mark Miller were lavish in their
praise ("Magnificent" was the most frequent word used to describe
the collective effort) of the hundreds of Piper people who helped
others get around, repair home and company damage, provided
temporary shelter, and just plain moral support. While morale took
some hits as staffers worried about the long-term effects of the
meteorological mayhem, the malaise didn't last long as people
rolled up their sleeves, got back to work as soon as they could
safely do so, waded through the mess and moved affected work areas
to locations that allowed them to continue production relatively
unmolested.
The full "restoration" (as Suma calls it) will take quite a
while. Insurance is just starting to pay off and decisions are yet
to be made about how to structure the restoration, or even what
really needs to be restored/replaced at all. "We've had some money
come in, but nowhere near the amount we need to finish the
restoration, but we're forging ahead. It's a difficult process
since there are multiple layers of insurance, multiple deductibles,
to contend with and this is obviously a loss unprecedented in
the history of (the state)," noted Suma.
Most important, the damage has yet to be fully enumerated.
Suma explains that, "We're still finding things... the storm drains
over in Bldg 20 and 21... there are drains in each building... when
the city reviewed our sewerage, they found our water usage
skyrocketed when it rains because the roofs are breached, the water
runs in, through the drains and runs the usage way up, where it
used to run off into the retention ponds... these are some of the
things that we have to deal with, daily."
For the moment, though, Piper is ramping up (rapidly) to get to
a 6 airplane a week production cycle and is not all that far
from the goal. It is an amazing success story in light of all that
they faced, and all that they should have had to contend with. The
true measure of the survival spirit in play at Piper is that
despite all that they encountered, critical parts deliveries
were being made within a week of the storms... and that a big part
of the delays in shipping those parts were a function of the
ability of the shipping companies to even get to their embattled
location. Yes, they got hit... but the effects are neither as
long-lived as one would have suspected, nor as critical as they
(frankly) should have been.
A tour of the plant shows a lot of temporary changes, but no
visible diminishment in quality or integrity. The workforce is
obviously resolved to put the hurricanes behind them, and help grow
the company in an industry that is finally showing some sustained
signs of life. Some of the most critical aspects of the
manufacturing process, those that would have been most adversely
affected by the environmental problems they incurred, show the
least effect, overall.
Mark Miller does explain that such functions, especially the
paint shop, got fast attention when the production scheme was
altered to avoid damaged structures and the work in that location
looks both professional, as well as (very) busy. Miller also
admitted that Piper dodged a major bullet in having enough reserve
production space (which was already organized exceedingly well as
part of their "Factory of the Future" initiative) to reallocate
that capacity quickly... and once everything was moved to "drier"
spaces, work proceeded with only the smallest
possible interruption.
Yes, Piper perseveres... but if you know the history of this
company, that shouldn't come as any kind of surprise.
Coming Soon: CEO Chuck Suma talks about the GA
market, does some forecasting, talks about a possible Piper jet,
and opines on Piper's place in the post-bonus depreciation
selling cycle.